Paddle Migration

Note: This post will be updated as our migration process continues.

Last updated: 4th July 2024

Today (4th July 2024) – New users signing up will now be offered a $1 trial instead of a free account. This will enable all people trying inlinks to see the enhanced feature set. We are sunsetting the Free forever account for new users, as it is not showing enough of the inLinks capabilities. Existing free users will be able to maintain their free accounts ifthey are acively used eacj month.

(5th June 2024) we launched phase 1 of migrating its payment processing from Stripe to Paddle over the coming weeks and months.

From today, new users on InLinks will be linked to the Paddle checkout, even if they register for a free account. This mean that when they upgrade, they will pay on Paddle. Existing users will continue to pay using Stripe at this time, but free users already on the system before 5th June 2024 will now upgrade through the Paddle path if they ever upgrade.

The impact on existing customers should be minimal, but there are some things that should be noted:

• For new users, the free accounts will eventually convert to “Trial Accounts”
• New accounts will start on Paddle, with existing users being migrated at a later date
• Local taxes may be applicable for all users when migration is complete
• The term “PADDLE.NET*INLINKS” (or similar) will appear on card statements

(At this time, free accounts still do not expire.)

Why the change?

Changing payment processing providers is not a decision that we have taken lightly. In fact, we will even have to pay more to use Paddle than Stripe. But there are two really big differences. The first is that Paddle lets you pay in many more ways, including PayPal and this will reduce card failures. The second is that Paddle acts as the “Merchant of Record”.

More Ways to Pay

Paddle actually integrates with loads of payment processors (including Stripe). A full list is over here. Although our integration may not have ALL of them enabled, some of the exciting new options include: Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.

Merchant of Record

This may sound boring, but without using a merchant of record, InLinks (which is a VERY small team) would need to work out and potentially pay sales tax (also called VAT) in hundreds of countries using local laws. When just starting out, companies like us do so little business in each country, that the thresholds are too small in each country for anyone to care… but as our footprint in a country (or in the USA, state-by-state) grows, we have the potential to hit a threshold where that region might insist we register and add local taxes to all our checkouts. we are simply not equipped to deal with hundreds of regional tax systems, so Paddle acts as the invoicing company. You pay Paddle for the InLinks services and Paddle pays us. This means your local taxes are all handled correctly for your region, and we only have to deal with one sales invoice, not hundreds or thousands. This could mean that you now pay local taxes on checkout, but as a business you should usually be reclaiming these through your own accounts anyway.

Trial Accounts take over from Free Accounts

As the features grow on InLinks, maintaining free accounts is becoming more and more expensive. So whilst existing free accounts will still work after the migration, we will stop free accounts for new users and instead introduce trial accounts. These will allow you to test InLinks for a period at a low rate, but if you continue using InLinks, you will migrate onto a paid version. This approach has been adopted by most established SAAS tools.

If anyone has questions, feel free to ask in the chat box on the website after login, but for the majority of users, the impact will be negligible.